After a marathon of events in Indore, Hyderabad last year, Asifa India organised its annual fest International Animation Day at Bengaluru and Pune during December. They supported Women in animation-India collective in organising WIA Mixer events at Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Indore, Bengaluru and Pune. Asifa India also announced the winners of “Awards of excellence” under various professions and student categories of Asifa India Awards of excellence 2022-23.
This year IAD is happening at Kolkata, Mumbai, New Delhi and Nashik in March. Few more cities including Chennai, Chandigarh and Bilaspur will be organising CG Meet up in next few weeks. Asifa India also regularly organises its monthly meet up series and has partnered with Epic Games to organise the Annual Women Creators Program since 2021.
Asifa India president Sanjay Khimesara shared that IAD events are providing a huge enthusiasm and engagement from creative students and professionals. In recent festivals across four cities over 3000 participated in Knowledge sessions and contests.
Knowledge sessions by top experts under IAD along with engaging contests were followed with Women in Animation Mixers and Showcase of Annecy films. ‘Women in Animation’ India chapter is headed by Saraswathi Vani Balgam and it has recently organised Mixers in eight different cities.
Asifa India has strengthened its member and sub-chapter reach and organised IAD Fest across different geographies of India. Main IAD fest in Indore saw a turnout of massive 1000+ people and Hyderabad also saw great response during November. Bengaluru and Pune recently hosted IAD during December with engaging competitions and series of knowledge sessions and huge turnout. Asifa India further plans to organise IAD in few more cities across India.
Each year, Asifa India invites entries from professionals and students for Annual Asifa India Awards of Excellence (AOE) as a part of International Animation Day celebration.
The entries were evaluated by a team of two International and two Indian jury members. The jury members for Awards of Excellence 22-23 included NYC Animation Industry Council (United States) Lisa Goldman, Srilankan animation film designer Poornima Meegammana, Yashraj Films VFX producer Sherry Bharda, IIT-Delhi department of design assistant professor Charu Monga.
Following are the winners of 2022-23 Award of Excellence:
- Best 3D Short under the Professional category – Animated feature Uninhabitable created by Jessica Tan
“The Award of Excellence has been really great encouragement and I’m really honoured to have received this recognition for my film. It is a film about climate change from the perspective of a tiny creature: a dragonfly trying to survive the uninhabitable world and I am really thankful that I got the chance to tell this story. The one thing I have learnt from participating in this program and making this film is that everyone should tell the story they have in their hearts. I would encourage filmmakers to participate in ASIFA’s awards to help their films reach wider audiences,” said Tan.
- Stopmotion award under the student category – Ocean film created by Yashwanth, Mohan and Indu
Yashwanth and Mohan expressed joy. Indu said, “I am happy to share that we won an award of excellence from Asifa India for our short film Ocean, a stop motion animation in the student category. Asifa India has a separate program for women filmmakers to encourage more girls and women in the animation field. I would like to share a few words for an animator to do practice as animation is skill based, a lot of practice is needed to achieve.”
- Animated Ad Film under the Student Category – Animated feature DeBeers Diamond Ring created by Aishwarya Gaikwad
“I want to express my gratitude to the jury for nominating our ad film for this award. I am deeply honoured to have received the ASIFA India Award of Excellence in the Students Category for the Animated AD Film. I want to thank my teammates Rupali Jadhav and Suraj Saroj for their hard work and dedication to this achievement. I’d also like to thank my mentor, Sanchita Ma’am, and my senior, Jaldeep Patil, for always being there for guidance and support. It was a lot of fun and a wonderful learning experience to compete in the ASIFA India Awards of Excellence. This honour was a dream come true for me,” said Gaikwad.
- Best Editing in animated series under the Professional category – Kamathipura film director and editor – Ayushman Pandey
“Asifa India has played a leading role in creating a community of art Indian artist interested in possibilities of real time animation and real time rendering and i want to thank Asifa for pushing the mission further with this award, I would anchorage every Indian animator to submit their work in Award of excellence because it is a beautiful way of engaging the Indian animation and VFX community at large,” said Pandey.
- 2D Animation under the Professional category – Animated feature Togetherness created by Sreemon Das
Das felt very proud and honoured that the film Togetherness won the award.
- Best Special Effects in animated short Animated Short Film under the Professional category – Dear me short film by Suchana Saha
“I want to thank Asifa India for this recognition. It means a lot for independent artists like us. Asifa is one of the oldest foundations for animation in India. Thus their award of excellence is of huge importance to me as an artist,” said Saha.
- Best Character Design under the Professional category – Stop Biting Your Nails by Vaibhav Kumaresh from Vaibhav Studios
- Best 2D animated series under the Professional category – Lamput season four by Vaibhav Kumaresh
Kumaresh was super excited about the same and expressed his gratitude to team Asifa India on behalf of the entire team of Vaibhav Studios.
Here are some more details of International Animation Day at Bengaluru and Pune:
The three day IAD event covered various competitions including digital and face painting, clay modelling, short films, photography, storyboarding etc. Another exciting part of the event was the gaming arena where students competed in various games such as PubG, Free Fire and Valorent and other esports. Event also saw a hands-on Unreal Engine boot camp by Unreal authorised trainer Bhavpreet Ghai. Main event was organised on 3 December.
Sanjay Khimesaraspoke about the growing community activities of Asifa. Dr. Indira Gupta and Shyamsundar Gupta of Bengaluru Supporter Arena Jayanagar spoke about Industry growth. The expert sessions included a talk about the latest updates in the gaming Industry by GameIN creative art director Somsundar and Mesmerizing Magic from Asifa India’s Women Creators Program with UE by Indie game developer and Unreal Engine Women creator-2022 Sri Keerthi.
Following this was a workshop on storytelling through spiral compositions by Technicolor Games creative director Vichar BN. Asifa India also supported an informal meet & greet event on Women in Animation (WIA)-Mixer during the networking lunch. Post Lunch, DNEG VFX supervisor Shailendra Swarnkar took everyone through the behind the scenes of the movie Bullet Train.
The event concluded with a talk by Vanarasena Animation Studios Senapati and Xentrix Studios creative director Vivek Ram taught students about animation as a means of immersive storytelling, and another one on how to create realistic humans by Xentrix Studios associate director HOD assets Vishnu Ram S.
Nearly 600 students and professionals participated in this three day event which was supported by Arena Animation Jayanagar, XP PEN, Arha Creations, 3D connexion, Galore systems and C4 Clickety Clack.
The Pune event had four industry experts who shared their knowledge through insightful sessions on animation, visual effects and gaming. Unreal authorised instructor Rajdeep Paul took a session on the importance of Unreal Engine and its growing applications due to real-time production. Shreyansh Pareekh from Ubisoft spoke about gaming in India and gave a presentation of work from his gaming studio. This was followed by a master class by DNEG India’s Manoj Barhate who presented behind the scenes from Oscar winning film Dune. Ares Studio executive producer Subhajit Sarkar shared some of the top work & industry insights.
The ASIFA India event had over 600 students and some engaging displays of art & craft; photography exhibition & digital Competitions were organised alongside. Another attraction of IAD-Pune was a session by Women in Animation Mixer organised by Nishita Jain from Symbiosis and supported by Madhavi Pagariya, Dr.Sunanda Rathi, Puja Purohit & Priyanka Acharya. Pune sponsors included Net Protector, XP-Pen and Nerd-O-Funk.